臺灣東亞文明研究學刊 - 東亞經典與文化研究計畫 - 國立臺灣大學

Jörn RÜSEN Future-directed Elements of an European Historical Culture 219
The author Adolf Muschg has called this integration of negative elements into
a European historical identity "a specific achievement of memory". 8 It is an open
question what consequences this paradigmatic change in the cultural procedures of
identity formation will bring about. This process is going on. It has not yet
sufficiently infiltrated the still powerful nationalistic elements in the historical
identity of European countries, mainly in Eastern Europe. On the other side there is
a danger to become proud of this ambivalence and to ground the European selfesteem
on this pride. But my general impression is different: we can observe strong
doubts of the European intelligenzia about themselves. To quote Adolf Muschg
again: "The golden standard for the credibility of the European construction is
hidden in the depths of doubts about its load-bearing capacity." 9
It is this doubt and its expression in debates and discussions and a general antitriumphant
relationship to the past which characterizes European historical culture
at least in the very perspective within which it appears as future-directed. Elements
of mourning indicate new components of sense generation in historical culture as
well. The clear moralistic distinction between perpetrators and victims is replaced
by a much more complex interrelationship, within which the perpetrators even can
become victims and the other way around.
As to the second attribute of ethnocentrism—an origin-oriented teleology—the
Europeans at least on the level of academic and public discourse—have given up
the idea of an uninterrupted development of Europe from its very beginning in
Greek antiquity. 10 . There is a structural change in the logic of historical thinking
under way: Instead of an origin-oriented teleology history is becoming a futureoriented
reconstruction of the past. In this kind of historical perspectivation the
8 Ibid., p. 40.
9 Ibid., p. 65.
10 According to one of our leading humanists Jan Assmann even this origin lies in old Egypt's
achievements of a civilized human life Assmann, Ma'at. Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im
Alten Ägypten (München: C. H. Beck, 1990).
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